LA Westerners | Los Angeles Westerners

Roundup: February 12, 2014

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM

Speaker: Will Bagley
Subject: Hurrah for the Handcart Scheme!

Click here to view photos from the event.

“We cannot afford to purchase wagons and teams as in times past, I am consequently thrown back upon my old plan―to make hand-carts, and let the emigration foot it, and draw upon them the necessary supplies, having a cow or two for every ten,” Brigham Young wrote in 1855. “They can come just as quick, if not quicker, and much cheaper.” This decision to rely on what a Danish emigrant called “two-wheeled torture devices” set in motion the worst disaster in overland trail history, one that killed six times as many people as died with the Donner Party. Will’s third presentation to the LA Westerners, “Hurrah for the Handcart Scheme!,” will resolve a few puzzles left unresolved in his 2009 article, “‘One Long Funeral March’: A Revisionist’s View of the Mormon Handcart Disasters,” which is available here:

http://user.xmission.com/~research/central/handcart.pdf

Will Bagley has written about overland emigration, frontier violence, railroads, mining, computers, and Utah and the Mormons, and as novelist Sandra Dallas says, “No one tells the history of the early western trails better” than he does. He has appeared in dozens of films, including the American Experience episode of “The Mormons” and the Discovery Channel’s recent “Gold Fever.” The Salt Lake Tribune published more than 220 of his historical commentaries. Bagley had edited the Arthur H. Clark Company’s 16-volume documentary series, Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier. He has won the Western Heritage Award (the Wrangler), three Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, and Best Book awards from the Western History Association, the Denver Public Library, and Westerners International. His fourteenth book, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, will be out in April.

Click here to view photos from the event.

Jim Macklin
Deputy Sheriff

Roundup: February 12, 2014

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM

Speaker: Will Bagley
Subject: Hurrah for the Handcart Scheme!

“We cannot afford to purchase wagons and teams as in times past, I am consequently thrown back upon my old plan―to make hand-carts, and let the emigration foot it, and draw upon them the necessary supplies, having a cow or two for every ten,” Brigham Young wrote in 1855. “They can come just as quick, if not quicker, and much cheaper.” This decision to rely on what a Danish emigrant called “two-wheeled torture devices” set in motion the worst disaster in overland trail history, one that killed six times as many people as died with the Donner Party. Will’s third presentation to the LA Westerners, “Hurrah for the Handcart Scheme!,” will resolve a few puzzles left unresolved in his 2009 article, “‘One Long Funeral March’: A Revisionist’s View of the Mormon Handcart Disasters,” which is available here:

http://user.xmission.com/~research/central/handcart.pdf

Will Bagley has written about overland emigration, frontier violence, railroads, mining, computers, and Utah and the Mormons, and as novelist Sandra Dallas says, “No one tells the history of the early western trails better” than he does. He has appeared in dozens of films, including the American Experience episode of “The Mormons” and the Discovery Channel’s recent “Gold Fever.” The Salt Lake Tribune published more than 220 of his historical commentaries. Bagley had edited the Arthur H. Clark Company’s 16-volume documentary series, Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier. He has won the Western Heritage Award (the Wrangler), three Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, and Best Book awards from the Western History Association, the Denver Public Library, and Westerners International. His fourteenth book, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, will be out in April.

Jim Macklin
Deputy Sheriff

Additional Upcoming Roundups:

Wednesday, March 12, 2014:

Speaker: Jerry Selmer
Subject: A Great American General – War Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

Wednesday, April 9, 2014:

Speaker: Brian Dervin Dillon, Ph.D.
Subject: Camanche: California’s Forgotten Ironclad

Corral News & Other Subjects

About Dinner Reservations:

Dinner reservations are $35 and the deadline is Friday, February 7, 2014. Late reservations can be accepted, but reservations made on time will assure you the entrée of your choice. Walk-ins are $40.00 for potluck.

Checks are payable to “Westerners, Los Angeles Corral”. Please mail to Registrar of Marks & Brands Pete Fries, 28160 Newbird Drive, Santa Clarita, CA 91350-1836. You may call Pete at (661) 296-7713 with questions or for late reservations.

2014 Dues Notice:

Thanks to those who submitted their 2014 dues checks based on the request in the January Roundup mailing. Over 65% of the members have already paid their dues! If you have not yet responded, please send your check for $45 payable to “Westerners, Los Angeles Corral” to the Registrar of Marks & Brands, Pete Fries, 28160 Newbird Drive, Santa Clarita, CA 91350-1836. New members since September 30, 2013 and Honorary members do not have to pay 2014 dues.

You can use the accompanying Roundup reply envelope to submit your check. If you are sending in a reservation for the February 12^th Roundup, you can include both payments in one check or include a separate check for the annual dues. Remember that your dues may be tax deductible.

Looking for a Little Sunshine:

Michele Clark, the Corral’s new Sunshine Wrangler, would like to hear from you about any of our members or their spouses who are under the weather, recuperating, or need some attention from the Corral. We cannot reach out to people unless we know about what they are going through. Please call Michele at (626) 799-6211 or email her at mclark216@earthlink.net. Give her as much information about the member’s situation as you can.

Requesting Corral Chips for the “Branding Iron”:

Is there some development in your professional life – research, publications, presentations, honors, etc. – the rest of the Corral would want to know about? Please complete the Corral Chips Reporting Form enclosed with this Roundup notice. If have any questions about reporting Corral Chips, please contact Steve Lech, the Corral’s Publications Editor at (951) 686-1476 or rivcokid@gmail.com.

2014 – Roundups

June 2014 – See Events & Outings

July 2014

August 2014

September 2014

October 2014 (Rendezvous)

November 2014

December 2014

Roundup: January 8, 2014

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM

Speaker: A. C. W. Bethel, Ph.D.
Subject: Los Angeles Transit Planning in the 1920s

Click here to view photos from the event.

Corral member Walt Bethel will speak on a topic that still affects each of us who live in the Los Angeles area on a daily basis. Early in the 20th century a network of fast, electric interurban railway lines, the Pacific Electric, linked most towns and cities in the Los Angeles metropolitan area with downtown Los Angeles. By the 1960s, nothing of it remained. Some writers have attributed this to a conspiracy by automobile-centered industries to replace rail transit with diesel buses, but the real explanation lies elsewhere. By the early 1920s Los Angeles was becoming a truly decentralized city, and any adequate transportation system would need to be able to take people from anywhere to anywhere else, not just deposit them in an increasingly irrelevant downtown. But when the Pacific Electric proposed a cross-town subway to connect its eastern and western lines, the City Council looked instead for an ideal urban transit system. The result was an unbuildable proposal, and the PE, sidelined, was never able to link its system together.

Walt taught philosophy for 40 years at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Now retired from teaching, with some regret, Walt has shifted to a new career focusing on California history. He has written articles, reviewed books, and delivered presentations on California’s rich and complex transportation history in several professional venues. Even before retiring from Cal Poly, he had reviewed history books for the Pacific Historical Review, California History, and Southern California Quarterly, in addition to our own Branding Iron. Since then he has published articles on California’s rich transportation history in these last three journals. He also edits the quarterly newsletter for the California Council for the Promotion of History and serves on the Council’s Board of Directors. His paper tonight owes its beginnings to a fascination with rail transportation formed in his Hollywood childhood, when riding the Red Car downtown was an adventure.